As Jim Hoft points out, even their own reporting on the supposed conservative backlash to the ad didn’t actually cite any evidence of such:

The phrase “sparked a conservative backlash” contained a link to an MSNBC article from last year that mentioned the controversy over the ad, but the article did not report a political bent to the racist comments made about the ad. That article in turn links back toanother MSNBC article about the ad controversy that also does not ascribe political motives to the racist attacks.

In other words, Gabriela Resto-Montero and MSNBC made up the alleged ‘conservative’,’ right wing’ racist attack on the Cheerios ad.

Really? Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple says that’s exactly who they are, and the string of apologies following these incidents look increasingly like enabling devices rather than actual remorse:

The tweet in question isn’t clever, helpful or fair. It’s a divisive piece of taunting nastiness driven by a worldview that MSNBC personalities have surfaced with great regularity in recent memory, always followed by excellent apologies. After then-MSNBC host Martin Bashir suggested that Sarah Palin be subjected to an excrement-related punishment visited upon slaves, he said, “My words were wholly unacceptable,” among other very contrite things. After short-lived MSNBC host Alec Baldwin allegedly shouted down a paparazzo with homophobic language, he said, “I did not intend to hurt or offend anyone with my choice of words, but clearly I have — and for that I am deeply sorry.” After host Melissa Harris-Perry presided over a segment that mocked Mitt Romney’s family over a photo featuring his adopted African-American grandson, the host said, among other things, “So without reservation or qualification, I apologize to the Romney family. Adults who enter into public life implicitly consent to having less privacy. But their families, and especially their children, should not be treated callously or thoughtlessly.”

And now this Cheerios thing. The string of offenses raises doubts about Wolffe’s claim that the tweet from last night doesn’t reflect “who we are at msnbc.” Rather, the tweet appears to a careful observer to define precisely what MSNBC is becoming: A place that offends and apologizes with equal vigor.

The Erik Wemple Blog supports media organizations that muster strong apologies. Too often, mistakes are followed by stonewalling and a failure to repent. Apologies can be an important measure of accountability. Yet this string of meae culpae suggests that the apology may be morphing into an enabling device for the network’s tendentious and divisive attitudes. Sometimes a bad tweet represents the errant and unrepresentative thoughts of some employee managing the social-media accounts. And sometimes it represents institutional morays and prejudices.

Here’s the ad, which General Mills must be delighted is receiving so much attention. It will be the first Super Bowl ad to feature a biracial family, which is … no big deal in 2014 to anyone except MSNBC, apparently. It’s cute, and it sells Cheerios. And like everything else in the world, it’s yet another silly item for Comcast’s television unit to exploit and demagogue:

Reason’s Matt Welch notes that this lazy and idiotic demagoguery is hardly limited to MSNBC, even if they are its leading purveyors:

For an example, check out this passage in New Yorker Editor David Remnick’s extraordinarily long and often insightful recent profile of the president.

In the electoral realm, ironically, the country may be more racially divided than it has been in a generation. Obama lost among white voters in 2012 by a margin greater than any victor in American history. The popular opposition to the Administration comes largely from older whites who feel threatened, underemployed, overlooked, and disdained in a globalized economy and in an increasingly diverse country. Obama’s drop in the polls in 2013 was especially grave among white voters.

Italics mine, to underscore what one of the nation’s most decorated journalists felt zero need to substantiate in a 16,000-word article. Do older white voters really feel more “threatened” and “disdained” by a “globalized economy” and “increasingly diverse country” than other age and ethnic/pigmentation cohorts? I’m sure there’s plenty of interesting poll data out there, but Remnick (a 55-year-old white guy, FWIW) doesn’t need to cite any: He knows it’s true, his readers know it’s true, and the only real question is how much you can respectably pin opposition to this twice-elected black president on racism.

This isn’t just bad journalism, it’s bad tolerance. Attributing a single set of personality traits to scores of millions of people whose only commonality is age and race is the opposite of judging people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. It’s also a cheap way to wave off the substance of anti-Obama criticism—why bother figuring out why a majority of Americans haveconsistently disliked the flawed Affordable Care Act when you can just roll your eyes and assert that the real reason is white anxiety and worse? There is nothing tolerant about assuming that those who have different ideas than you about the size and scope of government are motivated largely by base ethnic tribalism.

Most people, I think, have come to the conclusion that a citation of racism works in a similar way to Godwin’s Law. It’s the final, and losing, stage of any argument these days, at least those which involve progressives in any way.

Update: Is MSNBC executive editor Richard Wolffe “the most clueless person on the Internet”? John Sexton makes a pretty good argument for it.

Blowback

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Comments

Fox News runs a virtual HUAC committee on Dems every day –
where’s the OUTRAGE (copyright RNC) over that?

verbaluce on January 30, 2014 at 2:33 PM

Still tossing out the accusations…without any supportive evidence beyond the troll’s own revisionist / projective rants….

After all, according to the troll, what MSNBC did was immaterial and not all that important, because (que projection) Fox News does it all the time….

…History lesson: HUAC established in 1938. Between 1931 and 1994 (except for 1946-48 and 1952-54), the House was majority controlled by DEMOCRATS. The HUAC was established by Democrats. It operated under the chairmanship / majority control of Democrats, except for 4 years until it was rolled into the House Judiciary Committee in 1975.

But because of McCarthy (who never was a member of the HUAC – since he was Senator…), vapid leftists use the HUAC in pejorative projection attacks against conservatives. As with most of those attacks, facts and evidence is immaterial. They believe it is so, therefore it is.

Pete Seeger was an anti-interventionist. Matter of fact, he was going to release an anti-intervention album telling us to not go to war until his favorite dictatorship, Russia, was attacked by Germany, then he became pro-intervention. i.e., he didn’t give a damn about stopping Hitler until Russia was attacked.

In the “John Doe” album, Mr. Seeger accused FDR of being a warmongering fascist working for J.P. Morgan. He sang, “I hate war, and so does Eleanor, and we won’t be safe till everybody’s dead.” Another song, to the tune of “Cripple Creek” and the sound of Mr. Seeger’s galloping banjo, said, “Franklin D., Franklin D., You ain’t a-gonna send us across the sea,” and “Wendell Willkie and Franklin D., both agree on killing me.”

The film does not tell us what happened in 1941, when — two months after “John Doe” was released — Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union. As good communists, Mr. Seeger and his Almanac comrades withdrew the album from circulation, and asked those who had bought copies to return them. A little later, the Almanacs released a new album, with Mr. Seeger singing “Dear Mr. President,” in which he acknowledges they didn’t always agree in the past, but now says he is going to “turn in his banjo for something that makes more noise,” i.e., a machine gun. As he says in the film, we had to put aside causes like unionism and civil rights to unite against Hitler.

Not only did Seeger support Hitler, prior to Germany’s invasion of the USSR in June 1941, but Seeger hit the trifecta in supporting totalitarian murderers – supporting Hitler, Uncle Joe Stalin, and Uncle Ho Chi Minh. In fact, not only did Seeger openly support Hitler and Stalin, he also worked so hide their pogroms against Jews.

Seeger was a useful idiot whether he was fully aware of the horrors in Soviet Russia or not. The original meaning was one who was used by others, but not respected by them. And in that regard Seeger was useful to the Soviets, but he never would have found a place of honor amongst them if it came to that. The meaning has expanded over time to include people who have no idea what they are championing, but the original meaning still has a tremendous amount of usefulness. Consider those who continue to proclaim Islam is a religion of peace. If the Muslims took over the world they would lose their heads just like every other infidel.

Not only that, I don’t think he produced much good music. There would’ve been at least something redeeming in it. Someone like Dylan on the other hand was smart enough not to be thoroughly co-opted by any movement or politician or party.

You knew who I meant when I called you a bunch of southern fried racists. I’m betting you guys want to wave the stars and bars and relive the Civil War!!!! /s
These trolls are definitely Obama Era inept.

I’m betting you guys want to wave the stars and bars and relive the Civil War!!!! /s
HornetSting on January 30, 2014 at 4:48 PM

A bit OT, but: I was in a wargame club in HS, and we spent several months replaying the Civil War (on a boardgame) with 2 man teams. I was on the Confederate side, and we actually won the war by doing what the real Confederates should have done – took our much better cavalry and ran all over the north cutting supply lines.

That is, we’re not in 1932 here, biracial couples are – well, normal place. The ad is not exactly groundbreaking – Kirk kissed Uhura a long time ago. Why’s MSNBC stuck in an issue, that’s long since been resolved?

I’m betting you guys want to wave the stars and bars and relive the Civil War!!!! /s
HornetSting on January 30, 2014 at 4:48 PM

A bit OT, but: I was in a wargame club in HS, and we spent several months replaying the Civil War (on a boardgame) with 2 man teams. I was on the Confederate side, and we actually won the war by doing what the real Confederates should have done – took our much better cavalry and ran all over the north cutting supply lines.

dentarthurdent on January 30, 2014 at 4:58 PM

You just couldn’t let it be because you’re southern and obviously racist. //

You just couldn’t let it be because you’re southern and obviously racist. //
Current publican leadership need to play that game.

HornetSting on January 30, 2014 at 5:02 PM

The funny part of that – my family is all true Maine and Masschusetts yankees going clear back to the 1700s.
I had to marry into the “southern” family – my father-in-law is originally from Forsythe, GA.

IP in communist Hell. He liked Hitler, commies the world over and all the thugs in the world. God, you are moronic.

Schadenfreude on January 30, 2014 at 3:47 PM

As much I enjoy the spittle on the lips babbling of the ignorant ragers, it always saddens me a little when you join in.

“He liked Hitler”.

You twit.

verbaloon on January 30, 2014 at 3:56 PM

Choke on it.

In 1940, Pete Seeger, a member of the Young Communist League, lent his support for the effort to stop America from going to war to fight the Nazis. The Communist-party line at the time was that the war between Britain and Germany was “phony” and a mere pretext for big American corporations to get Hitler to attack Soviet Russia. The album Seeger and his fellow Almanac Singers, an early folk-music group, released was called “Songs for John Doe.” Its songs opposed the military draft and other policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Franklin D, listen to me,
You ain’t a-gonna send me ’cross the sea.
You may say it’s for defense
That kinda talk ain’t got no sense.

Their strategy is smear and retreat, smear and retreat. They know the smear will be remembered far longer than any fake apology they issue. If they smear the conservatives long enough, the low-information voters will believe it, and unfortunately, they vote. Sheeple.

In the electoral realm, ironically, the country may be more racially divided than it has been in a generation. Obama lost among white voters in 2012 by a margin greater than any victor in American history. The popular opposition to the Administration comes largely from older whites who feel threatened, underemployed, overlooked, and disdained in a globalized economy and in an increasingly diverse country. Obama’s drop in the polls in 2013 was especially grave among white voters.

Actually, what it means is that racist minority voters turned out in mass to elect and re-elect a failure of a President that the rest of the country didn’t want.

“Most people, I think, have come to the conclusion that a citation of racism works in a similar way to Godwin’s Law. It’s the final, and losing, stage of any argument these days, at least those which involve progressives in any way.”

For me personally, I have decided that anyone who tells someone else that they are racist is being a bully.

And since we now have zero tolerance for bullying, obviously the bully is worse than the racist.

So go ahead, tell me I’m being racist, because then YOU are being a bully … and lose.